WALKER: So we discussed by email a few months ago the interesting fact that a higher proportion of Australian philosophers are utilitarians or consequentialists than in most other countries. What is your explanation for this?

SINGER: One explanation is that Australia is more secular than certainly compared with the United States. And that's almost the first thing I noticed when I went to live in the United States, when I first went to Princeton in 1999. It's really a much more religious country, and not just in these conservative southern states, but in many ways. People would assume religious belief in me. I remember I gave a talk somewhere about animals. And there was a little social gathering afterwards, and a woman came up to me and without any sort of preamble said to me, “Professor Singer, I've always wanted to know, and I'd like to know your view, do you think the animals will be with us in heaven?” I can't imagine an Australian just going up to a professor who’s given a lecture about animals without saying anything about god or an afterlife (which I don't believe in) and ask that question which just seemed to assume that I thought there was a heaven. So I think that's part of it. Obviously — well maybe it's not obvious — because you can be a Christian and a utilitarian, and there have been examples of that, but generally, religions teach sets of rules, which are contrary to utilitarianism. So I think being a relatively secular country is part of it.

Judith Brett, a professor of history, wrote this book about Australian democracy and why we do elections better than some other countries.

WALKER: From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting?

SINGER: Yes, that was it. So she's comparing us with the United States and many ways in which we do elections much better than the United States, in which we have different underlying philosophies. Her point is the United States was founded by people… many people had left Britain and some other countries to escape tyranny, and then they founded the nation in rebellion against George III, and they have this Declaration of Rights. And so they're really very concerned about tyrannical government. That's a dominant thing for them. And so they are very strong on erecting individual rights and safeguards of those rights against tyrannical governments.

Whereas Australia was settled later, and at least some of the people who came to Australia — and perhaps the ones who were most politically active in Australia in the relatively early days of the settlement of Australia — were political radicals, including people like the Tolpuddle Martyrs who'd been struggling for democracy in Britain and were imprisoned for it and sent out to Australia. And they were actually influenced by Jeremy Bentham. So whereas the Americans were influenced by doctrines like John Locke and the limits on government and the rights of humans in nature, influential people in Australia were influenced by more utilitarian thinking. And maybe some of that stuck. And we still are influenced by the fact that the British government deported these political radicals to Australia.

WALKER: Have you heard of this book, The Founding of New Societies? Not sure whether it's quoted in Brett’s book, but it makes that argument that it's like a shard kind of splintered off mainland Europe at the time of the founding of the US colonies and then Australia. And that kind of preserved whatever was the dominant political ideology at the time of the splitting. And yeah, so for America, they're thinking more about Locke when they're drafting their constitution. Australians were thinking more about Bentham when they're drafting theirs.

Keith Hancock also had some words to say about this in his book Australia, in the 1930s (or whenever it was published) about how… You know the line about “Australians view their government as a vast public utility”?

SINGER: Yeah, yeah.

WALKER: For me this raises another question, which is… So, I think most people are deontologists at an individual level, but then they kind of expect their government to be utilitarian. Not sure whether you agree with that claim?

SINGER: Right. Bob Goodin wrote something along those lines: tilitarianism as a Public Philosophy.

WALKER: Yeah, exactly. So, maybe Australians expect their government to be especially utilitarian for these historical, contingent reasons that you've outlined. But then, I guess, that still leaves the question of: what's the channel or the mechanism from that political ideology to then so many individuals being utilitarians in a totalising sense?

SINGER: I really don't know the answer to that. I guess there’s something in the water that leads that way. It's hard to say. But at least we're not pushing against this rights view.

But certainly, again, another thing I noticed when I came to the United States and to philosophy in the United States, was that utilitarianism was thought of by quite a lot of people as something of historical influence. But surely, we've moved beyond that, because we understand the importance of human rights. And so you're always, in a sense, having an uphill battle to be taken seriously as a utilitarian.

And I never felt that in Australia, even though the first class in ethics I took was taken by H.J. McCloskey, who was a deontologist and was an opponent of utilitarianism. But he was certainly open to people defending utilitarianism and never tried to ridicule it or anything like that. He just took it very seriously as did other philosophers.

WALKER: Funny, it struck me. You almost see the difference in the two cultures reflected in the architecture as well. When you walk through Washington, all the national monuments are in a beautiful classical design. You walk through Canberra, it's all like brutalist architecture. Much more utilitarian.

SINGER: Yes, that may be true. Although, those are period things, right? It depends when things get built or replaced.

WALKER: Yeah maybe. just like ideas.

To the extent that secularism is a factor underpinning Australian utilitarianism, reflecting on your personal journey, do you feel like that is a better explanation of your origins as a utilitarian than Tyler Cowen's explanation of Peter Singer as a Jewish moralist? Remember the 2009 BloggingHeads interview you did with him and he put this idea to?

SINGER: Yes, I think the secular explanation is much better. I have a Jewish family background, but certainly I've never been a religious Jew. And I've also never really been part of Jewish cultural institutions. I didn't attend a Jewish school. My parents were very assimilationist. They sent me to Scotch College, a Presbyterian private school, because they thought that would be best for me. And many people ask me whether the Holocaust background in my family — because three of my four grandparents were murdered by the Nazis — has some inputs. Maybe that does, but that's still not the same as being a Jewish moralist, I don't think. I think it's much more of a secularism.

WALKER: Last two questions. If we look back at the history of life on Earth through a hedonistic lens, has it been good, on the whole?

SINGER: No, I don't think it has been good, on the whole. I think there's probably been more suffering. Or the amount of suffering and the severity of the suffering probably outweighs the good in the past. I think the balance is changing. I think the balance has changed over the centuries. And particularly, I would say the balance changed, let's say, from the second half of the 20th century — things seem to get significantly better. And I think, despite the fact that we've now got a major war going on in Europe and climate change is still an uncontrolled threat, I think that there's grounds to be more optimistic today than they have been in earlier parts of human history.

WALKER: And what are those grounds? What are the best reasons to think that the future will be good overall?

SINGER: Much wider education. Literacy is 90% or something like that — never was that sort of level previously. Science and technology have made huge advances and enable us to feed ourselves without too much problem for most of the world. The proportion of the world's population that is hungry is smaller than it ever was. And of course, there's a lot of health innovations. We talked about the plague not that long ago. We deal much better with COVID than people were able to deal with bubonic plague. I think there's a lot of things like that.

WALKER: Peter Singer, thank you for joining me.

SINGER: Thank you. It's really been a very engaging and stimulating conversation.

WALKER: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you.